Planetary Science – Fusion Nepal

Most deep space missions send spacecraft hurtling far from the sun, into the frozen unknown hundreds of millions of miles beyond Earth. But on Friday, the European Space Agency (ESA) will blast two orbiters to heavily cratered Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.

Liftoff of the two craft — collectively called BepiColombo — is scheduled for 9:45 p.m. ET on Friday. It can be watched live here.

A European Ariane 5 rocket will lift BepiColombo into space. The two craft will then spend seven years traveling through the void before arriving at their Mercury destination, a metallic outpost in a relatively warm part of the solar system. Read more…

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Two tiny NASA satellites nicknamed Wall-E and Eva are about to hitch a ride to Mars.

The twin, suitcase-sized spacecraft, called cubesats, will launch to space Saturday aboard the same rocket carrying NASA’s InSight lander to Mars, but they’ll have very different missions once they reach the red planet in November.

While InSight is expected to unlock the secrets of the planet’s interior from the ground, the cubesats — collectively named MarCO, short for Mars Cube One — will stay in orbit around Mars to test out if these little spacecraft can relay information from the lander back to Earth. Read more…

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